Afrikaans Verb Conjugation

Afrikaans is a Germanic language, spoken in the South African Republic. Afrikaans, or Cape Dutch, is principally derived from the South Holland dialect of mid-17th-century Dutch settlers in South Africa.

Afrikaans gained loanwords from English, French, and German (through settlers) and from African languages and underwent grammatical simplification (for example, verb tense endings were dropped). Phonetic changes also occurred: sch- became sk- (Dutch schoen; Afrik. skoen, “shoes”), final t was lost after some consonants, and so forth.

Until the mid-19th century Afrikaans was a spoken language only; Standard Dutch was used for writing. A movement then arose to make Afrikaans a literary language. It was gradually used in newspapers, schools, and churches, and in 1925 it officially replaced Standard Dutch.